Women comprise more than half of the population in the United States and have overwhelmingly surpassed men in the attainment of Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. In 2011, women only comprised 16.1 percent of board seats in Fortune 500 companies in the United States (Soares, 2011). This large gender disparity is hurting our boards immensely, as it is not showing enough of a large percentage of the population. In other countries the inclusion of other races and genders has been documented to show that it can help a company immensely in regards to profitability. In this report, we are going to talk about gender disparity, what it is, how it affects our Boards, what is being done, and ultimately what we can do even more to help bridge the gap in our gender disparity. We will also discuss the pros and cons of gender quotas when it comes to firms and women and also what is being done outside the United States to combat gender disparity internationally, either voluntarily or through law.
Gender disparity, simply put, is inequality. In regards to this report we focus on the disparity of power when it comes to serving on Boards of Directors. According to Rachel Soares, who graphical depicts her information, shows that about 83% of all boards are composed of men overwhelmingly. (2011) That means women only make up about 17% of the member of a Board of Directors, and we consider that a problem. In figure 1 below, we show the disparity of women who hold positions on boards. (Soares, 2011) As you can see more than a tenth of our companies fail to even have a woman on their Board of Directors. And of those few percentages of women who are a part of the Board of Directors, a large percentage, around 81 percent, are white women. There is an even larger disparity among race when it comes to women serving on the Board of Directors (Soares, 2011). As shown in Figure 2, we have a large number of white women as compared even to just women in color. Of those women of color, most are black. The Committee for Economic Development (CED, 2012) cites that the reason that these disparities exist is simply because companies do not make it a priority to “develop the talents and advance the careers of female staff who have been identified as potential leaders. This means providing such women with the experiences and backgrounds needed to rise to the top, and advocating their promotion to higher levels of responsibility” (CED, 2012). Simply stated, if companies don’t recognize potential candidates talents, we will never be able to advance those candidates to take part of programs or added educational benefits and ultimately make them into Board of Directors members. Figure 1Figure 2

The United States has made small strides in regards to correcting gender disparity. In 2009 the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a proxy amendment to their disclosure requirements in regards to a company’s 8-K, 10-K, and 10-Q. It requires, “New disclosure regarding the consideration of diversity in the process by which candidates for director are considered for nomination by a company’s nominating committee.” (SEC, 2009) The greatest problem with the proxy amendment is that the SEC does not define diversity. Without a clear definition as to what diversity may mean, there is no guarantee that companies under the SEC will make any strides to include a more diverse selection of people. Mark Rogers, CEO and Founder of BoardProspects, believes that this is so because during the comment process of the then proposed amendment, companies said that diversity cannot be defined for every company (2012). He then cited a statement from TIAA-CREF, “Each company should take into account factors based on its own business model and specific needs and disclose the rationale for the criteria used” (Rogers, 2012). Thus making it clear that though diversity may be valued for many companies, it is not as high of a value that the SEC wants, or may not be a similar definition to the SEC.
Works Cited Securities Exchange Commission, (2009). Proxy disclosure enhancements (S7-13-09). Retrieved from website: http://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2009/33-9089.pdf

Rogers, M. Boardroom Diversity 2 Years After SEC Proxy Amendments (2012, April 09). . Retrieved from https://boardprospects.com/blog/boardroomdiversity/

“Fulfilling the Promise: How More Women on Corporate Boards Would Make America and American Corporations More Competitive.” The Committee for Economic Development. 2012. < http://www.fwa.org/pdf/CED_WomenAdvancementonCorporateBoards.pdf> [accessed online October 5, 2012.]

Soares, Rachel. “2011 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors.’” 2011. < http://www.fwa.org/pdf/CED_WomenAdvancementonCorporateBoards.pdf> [accessed online October 6, 2012.]